The European Commission has announced that it is opening a formal antitrust investigation into whether five international e-book publishers have been practicing anti-competitive tactics with the help of Apple

The European Commission has launched an antitrust investigation Tuesday that will determine if international e-book publishers and Apple have been partaking in anti-competitive activities.

Back in March of this year, the European Commission raided various e-book firms to see whether the sale of e-books breached competition rules. Around the same time, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the United Kingdom launched its own investigation into e-book prices. The European Commission and OFT had been working together through the year on the probe, but the OFT is now shutting its investigation down.

Now, the European Commission has announced that it is opening a formal antitrust investigation into whether five international e-book publishers have been practicing anti-competitive tactics with the help of Apple and its e-book store iBooks.

"The Commission will in particular investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or effect of restricting competition in the EU or in the EEA," said the European Commission's press release. "The Commission is also examining the character and terms of the agency agreements entered into by the above named five publishers and retailers for the sale of e-books."

The European Commission noted that the opening of proceedings indicates that this antitrust case will be treated as a "matter of priority."

There has been quite a bit of e-book drama over the last few months. For instance, the Authors Guild posted an angry blog entry about Amazon's Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and just last month, Penguin suspended the availability of its e-books to libraries saying that libraries are not allowed to loan e-books for the Kindle. Penguin even went to business partner OverDrive asking that it eliminate its "Get for Kindle" button for Penguin books.

The main problem I have with e-books is their god awful typography. I used to be in the design business and I often find myself rejecting printed books because I just can't face reading the awful typesetting, e-books are mostly really badly typeset.

I love the bookshops in the US and often come back with a suitcase full of books because US books are so well produced and well made. The bindings are first class, US paperbacks are a just that bit bigger than European paperbacks but above all the paper quality and typesetting is mostly really good. What happens so many times with European books is that the publishers try to save money by using lower quality paper, hence you get show through of the text from the other side, and they reduce the type size and the leading so as to squeeze more text on the page and thus save on the number of pages. It often ruins the reading experience. Not enough leading is killer.